Competitive spirit helps set swimming career for Donaldson

A dislike for losing his school swimming sports was a driving force for Mitchell Donaldson to take up swimming competitively.

The North Shore swimmer has displayed this competitive spirit throughout his swimming career, claiming several age group records a number of national titles.

Now with his school swimming sport days well behind him Donaldson is looking forward to representing his country at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games as part of the New Zealand swim team.

Donaldson, 21, has a slightly different build up to the Games compared to most of the team, who flew out to Spain for altitude training over the weekend.

Instead Donaldson will remain in Australia, where he is currently based, and continue training at Sydney University and compete in the Grand Prix meets in Brisbane before meeting the rest of the team in Vichy, France for the French Open at the beginning of July.

In the lead up to the Commonwealth Games, Donaldson says he wants to improve on his front-end speed with the aim for Glasgow to improve on his times from the New Zealand Opens, which doubled as the trials for the Commonwealth team.

Donaldson will be competing in the 200m freestyle, 200m individual medley and the 4x200m freestyle relay at Glasgow.